While thumbing through my home edition of the Oxford dictionary, I was surprised to see more than 30 definitions and sentence combinations written for the word “go.”
When I am dining in a restaurant, for example, the waitress will ask, “Would you like your leftovers to go?” When ordering takeout food from a gourmet shop, I am asked, “Are you staying or taking it to go?”
Tag lines like “made for people on the go,” “good to go,” or “go for it” are now common phases. Where am I going with all of this? To another kind of “go””” in the form of a shot glass!
Packaged in 2-ounce recyclable plastic, “Organic a Go Go Snack Shots” are nutritious little pots de crème, legal for everyone to toss down and available in three delicious flavors ”“ carmel, vanilla and chocolate.
“Wow! Finally there are shots for teenagers that are yummy, healthy and don”™t require parental approval,” said Helene Dacey, my daughter and our family dessert-tasting expert.
And who cares what a kid likes or dislikes?
The Koffman brothers do. Marty and Joby Koffman are the owners of Pearl River Pastry in the tiny village of Pearl River. For the last seven years, the “dessert dynamic duo” has been manufacturing a line of frozen, high-end, all-natural desserts designed for the individual. The Snack Shots and the new Organic a Go Go cake trio are perfect for lunch boxes and grabby-goers trying to satisfy a late afternoon craving.
As a former 1970”™s go-go girl, I was truly inspired by the dessert name alone. After my first tasting, I was go ”¦ going ”¦ gone over the creamy, luscious texture of the vanilla Snack Shot. The individual New York-style cheesecake, produced with Organic Valley Farm cream cheese, was remarkable too.
Standing tall and lean, the Koffmans are both “Fit for Life” and GQ magazine-style guys ”“ not an ounce of body fat between them. This is an usual ingredient mix for owners of a dessert company. That said, where did their pastry experience come from?
“We had both worked on Wall Street in the ”˜80s and had spent most of the ”˜90s building, purchasing and selling manufacturing plants around the country. We love to make stuff; stuff that you can smell when it”™s being created, that you can count at the end of the day and that you can actually see get loaded onto trucks,” said Marty Koffman.
In addition to meeting intense demands from organic retail stores, Pearl River”™s main focus is “meeting the needs (some might say complaints) of the modern pastry chef who has the impulse to create but not the resources (time, staff, etc.) to bake from scratch,” he said.
“We offer this chef the opportunity to use our clean-lined desserts as his or her palette to produce a beautiful, satisfying end to the meal or banquet.”
Included in the pastry chef collection is the signature Vanilla Bean Cheesecake, Liquid Chocolate Center Cake and Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting.
“Our love is not only for the food, but for its manufacture as well. We bring decades of manufacturing experience from other industries to guarantee our customers that the quality of the dessert ”“ its look, its taste and its performance ”“ is consistent from month to month, year to year and from product to product,” Marty Koffman added.
After sampling most of the pastry chef and retail lines, I started to panic. Every individual dessert required a second taste and others, a third. As a result, I watched my tummy inflate more and more and suddenly it started to resemble the “a Go Go” logo ”“ a big red balloon ready to pop!
Would my newly acquired wasteline be a go-go, I pondered?
“Hey, organic is so serious. We like giving it some life,” Joby Koffman said and chuckled. “It”™s for on-the-fly people who need a sweet indulgence.”
Thinking back to my dessert tasting at Pearl River Pastry, I decide to relax or “peace-out” about my new waistline. The Marty and Joby philosophy makes sense: Just grab a cheese cake or snap the top off a Snack Shot; 160 calories never tasted so good, to go!
